Position in chronology
YRL SC 1813-Bx1-3
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
A bureaucratic golden age, the Code of Ur-Nammu.
From the same catalogue range (near P373974)
Transliteration
2(u) 1(asz) 2(barig) sze gur 4(asz) 2(barig) 3(ban2) 2(disz) sila3 ziz2 gur mu-sza kiszib3 i3-kal-la x [x] x gal udu niga [x] a#-lu5-lu5 [x x] x ug3-IL2 tur-tur [x x]-x-nir#-gal2 ki-su7 uku2-nu-ti [iti] sig4#-u3-szub-ba-gar mu i-bi2-suen lugal
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — YRL SC 1813-Bx1-3. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Special Collections, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA (P373974) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P373974..
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.